by “You have to try the sandwiches,” said my colleague Lisa Markwell, an editor The Telegraph Magazineto advise me when I casually mentioned that I had been invited to a garden party at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the UK’s creative industries.
“I’m not eating UPFs,” I heard myself say (not my fault – blame Professor Tim Spector). “Is there a cloakroom?” I added. “They’re saying flat shoes on the emails. Mind you, everyone wears heels in the YouTube videos I’ve been watching since the invite. So maybe heels to start, then a change of footwear halfway through?”
“Don’t joke about it,” she said (to my point about UPFs), “the sandwiches are great. And no cloakrooms.” There are apparently 775 rooms in Buckingham Palace. No cloakrooms for the 4,000 guests expected today? This is a pretty small garden party, by the way.
Six are held each year between London and Holyrood. In this course, according to the Office of Vital Statistics, 27,000 cups of tea, 20,000 sandwiches and 20,000 slices of cake are consumed…at every party. In case you’re wondering about the correlation with Britain’s high obesity crisis… Nope. Each party usually has 8,000 guests, so that’s only 2.5 sandwiches each and 2.5 slices of cake.
Gates open at 3pm and guests start streaming in, walking in towards the arch on the far right as you face the palace, through to the gardens. On the left, a rather ugly temporary construction – Portaloos? Security stay away? To the right, a military band plays a wide variety of classic movie music and 40 acres of immaculate lawns, trees, beds and a lake. This is the largest private garden in the world – much bigger than the north London park I used to live over.
Nothing, not even that documentary featuring the late Queen and Sir David Attenborough, prepares you for the enormity of the gardens. Someone told me they looked municipal, but the lake (I wasn’t expecting a lake), the willows… Can you imagine a back garden that 4,000-8,000 people and their hats can comfortably swallow? Marquees are dotted on the grass and huge groups of chairs are spread out like packs of cards. Guests are officially encouraged to explore the coves, wander down the less intersected lanes, but no one wants to miss the grand entrance of our host.
At around 3.40pm, guests are gently ushered into four separate lines. I’ve been to palace events before, and the way the palace staff move people seamlessly into their positions is seriously choreographed, worthy of Kenneth MacMillan. Every 20 feet or so, in the middle of the lanes, there are small clusters of the chosen few who have been given guaranteed face time with members of the Royal family. I see Sir Ridley Scott, Toby Jones, Emilia Wickstead, Eudon Choi, Erin O’Connor, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley … but not Mike Ashley of Sports Direct, who bought matchesfashion.com late last year, the luxury-r-tailer, which was put into administration a few months later, leaving scores of British designers out of pocket by hundreds of thousands of pounds.
I see Tess Daly without hats, Vernon Kay, Dame Arlene Phillips, Louis Theroux and Tracey Emin. This is extremely eclectic. A well-known hairdresser in the fashion industry tells me enthusiastically that he has never seen so many badly dressed people. A bit hard. Many of them look very good and I only see one dress with a gap in the back to reveal plenty of bra.
There are lots of colors – including a hot pink Me and Em trouser suit. Brave. It’s not because of trousers but because Me and Em are so popular now, there’s a chance you could bump into someone in the same outfit. But I think she is safe.
Flowers are still to be seen, although less so, I suspect, than in previous years. Lots of really good hats, some fascinators (it’s so sunny I’m thankful for my brim). And lots of heels – so much for the flats meme.
I see the same beautiful look on faces I’ve seen whenever royalty is in the neighborhood – even on people who say they’re staunch republicans. These garden parties are certainly good for members of the Royal family to win new friends. In any case, they have been a regular part of the Buckingham Palace calendar since the 1860s, when Queen Victoria, the first monarch to live in the newly renovated Buckingham Palace, attacked them. But today is the first day held specifically for the creative industries, which, according to Buckingham Palace’s own press release, will generate more than £124 billion in 2022, employ 2.4 million people and have ambitious ambitions of which add £50 billion and another million jobs to their accounts. by 2030.
Britain has outstanding creativity. From 2010 to 2022, the creative sector grew more than one and a half times faster than the economy as a whole. So why would any government even consider cutting funding to school and college art departments? A good question the King himself could ask Rishi Sunak at one of their weekly meetings, according to a skeptic.
Time to focus, oh so casually (I’m not obsessed), on plates. Some of the frozen cakes have a crown. If 8,000 guests are allocated the same number of sandwiches as the parties, that’s a lot of food. Then again, as this is shrinking, is it enough? OK, I’m obsessing. I have to find the tea tent.
At 3.55pm, I see the King and Queen coming out of the Palace onto the terrace above the steps to the garden, the King in rather lovely pink shoes, sweetly matching the Queen’s outfit (not in flats either). I decide I’ll ask Charles if he’s wearing pink especially for the Creative Industries if I get the chance. Fortunately, I don’t.
At 3.59pm, the national anthem will begin. Then, A Lights goes into two different lanes. I’m standing a third of the way down the King. “It will still be hours,” Man in Arms tells me. “He’s very talkative, always going off the track to talk to members of the crowd. I don’t know if he and the Queen are competing to see who can chat the longest but…”
One woman throws her tea plate down on the grass next to us – practically in the middle of the lane. This is a very high-risk gesture, but the Gentleman at Arms is extremely calm and the plate is quietly relocated. The Gentleman at Arms is as tired as you’d think he was a guest, dressed as he is in a morning suit and top hat.
It turns out that most of the security people were in suits this morning (I try to imagine H from Duty Line in ; It’s not working). “You must be warm,” says one guest as we wait for chatty Charles. “We usually pray for cloud cover,” replied the GaA. “And rain at 6pm.” The sky is cloudless. “If all else fails and people aren’t going, the band will play the national anthem again and hope everyone gets the hint.”
Oh and the egg and cucumber sandwiches? They were not disappointed. Light yet creamy, in a good way. And very small.
